In September, Tom and I got an invitation for apple cidering at Pete and Cathy Hahn’s house.  Pete and Cathy are friends from Vanderbilt days.  They live in Hilliard, which is the other side of Columbus, but we don’t get to see them as often as we would like.  Pete is a professor at Ohio State and Cathy takes care of grandchildren four days a week.  Even when we are in town, they are usually busy.

We quickly accepted when we got the invitation for apple cidering.  So, in the middle of September we found ourselves in Pete and Cathy’s back yard knee deep in apples.  There were other friends there as well as most of the children and grandchildren.  Some of Pete and Cathy’s siblings also came.  Our families lives have intersected in so many ways that most of the faces were familiar, even though we haven’t seen them for years.

We started by getting all of the apples out of the two trees.  I was amazed at the number of apples the two trees produced!  The apples got washed and sorted.  The really rotten apples were thrown into a box to be used for rotten apple baseball later in the day.  Another bin had apples ready to go into the grinder.  A third bin had apples that needed bad spots cut out.

Tom helped pick the apples and get them over to the washing/sorting area.  Then he worked at the grinder and press.  I spent most of my time at the cutting table.  I had a chance to talk to Cathy, her mom, and her sister while we were cutting out bad spots.  Being able to catch up on each other’s lives was a fun way to get the work done.

Once we cut out the bad spots, we passed the apples on to the grinder and press.  The guys poured the apples into the grinder, turned the wheel, and then the apple bits fell into the press.  The press was the hardest work.  Tom and Paul worked together to get all the delicious juice pressed out of the apples.  Pete filled jug after jug with the juice that would be pasteurized to keep it safe.  Tom and I were invited to bring our own jug to take some home, but we stuck to sampling the fresh stuff.  Delicious!

A little after noon, when all the apples from the first tree had been processed, we took a break and enjoyed a lunch prepared by Cathy.  Tom and I had another event scheduled in the afternoon, so we left after lunch.  Everyone was enjoying the break so much, it looked like it would be a while before everything got geared up again.

Tom and I enjoyed helping out with the apple cidering.  It was a fun way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning.  Even better, we got to see and talk with some good friends.  We hope we will be able to see them again before too long.